Photographer To Discuss How He Has Been ‘Documenting America’ During Candlelight & Wine Art Lecture At Flanders Nature Center

WOODBURY — In a continuing series on the connection between art and nature, Flanders Nature Center and Land Trust will present “Documenting America” by Carl Weese, a Candlelight and Wine Art Lecture on Friday, September 14, at 7 pm. The event will be held at Flanders’ Van Vleck Studio at 5 Church Hill Road.

A professional photographer, Mr Weese will describe his process of developing and executing long term documentary photography projects, illustrated with extensive selections of photographs from projects dating from 1969 through this year.

Since 1972, Mr Weese has divided his time between commercial/editorial assignment photography for a wide range of clients and self-assigned, long-form documentary projects. The subjects of these independently produced projects range from street shooting to “documentary landscape.” They include a study of life in a small rural town in mid-1970s Pennsylvania, a carnival traveling a New England circuit in the 1980s, and current street photography in the small industrial towns of southern New England.

“Documentary landscape” projects include “Southern Mountains,” photographed primarily in West Virginia and the Carolinas, an extended series from Steep Rock Reservation, and several projects on vernacular architecture. The largest of these, nearing completion with two cross-country road trips this year, centers on the American drive-in theater and the relationship of these iconic structures to the varied terrain of the American regional landscape. This is planned for a book production that will combine the photographs with a history of the theaters and extensive interviews with the owners and managers of drive-ins that still survive into the 21st Century.

Depending on the specific project, the photographs are made with equipment ranging from small handheld digital cameras to antique large and ultra-large format film cameras. Print media used range from traditional platinum and silver prints to the latest pigment-ink digital printing.

Mr Weese has written extensively for photography magazines and websites, and is co-author and designer of the 1998 book The New Platinum Print, an instruction manual on modern variations of the classic photographic medium of platinum/palladium printmaking. He maintains a website with numerous online galleries of pictures and also publishes a daily blog of recent photographs.

A $5 donation is requested. For reservations or additional information, call 203-263-3711, x 10.